


What Is/What Was

by Gildedmuse



Category: Last 5 Years - Brown
Genre: But It's Last 5 Years, Depends on Your Perspective, Divorce, F/M, Full Of Longing & Regret, Future Fic, Light Angst, Niche Fandom Fic, Originally Posted on LiveJournal, Past Relationship(s), Post-Canon, So Also Kinda Pre-Canon, Two Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-30
Updated: 2019-04-30
Packaged: 2020-02-10 05:40:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18654043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gildedmuse/pseuds/Gildedmuse
Summary: Elise gets annoyed while helping Jamie pack up yet again, and brings up a point he hates to consider. Cathy wants her old life back, even Jamie.





	1. Jamie, Consider This...

**Author's Note:**

> [Posted to LJ in 2006.]

**Jamie, Consider This...**

  
"Have you ever considered that maybe it's... you."  
  
Jamie pauses for a second, and only a second. But for that moment the plates - the ones his mother sent him that he hates but keeps, anyway, because she'll have a fit if she comes over and he doesn't use them - hover over the box, tilting slightly in his hand. The room that he is so busy packing up is put on hold. For a second he listens to his editor’s words, lets himself actually hear Elise instead of ignoring her advice as he usually does, so sure that he is the writer and he must be right.  
  
Has he ever considered that it's his fault?  
  
The second is broken, and Jamie places the plate into the box, quickly wrapping the next one and adding it to the pile. He's getting good at this, at packing and moving out so quickly. After all he's been through these last fifteen years, it's no wonder. There Alyssa, Nadine, Sophie, and Lily to move away from. There was Cathy.  
  
Jaime looks down at the dish in his hands. From his wedding night, hardly used. Even Cathy thought they were hideous, and he remembers with a bit of a smile who she had hugged his mom and acted in awe of them even while sending Jamie looks over his mom's head. Childish faces followed by bright smiles, the ones that made her entire face light up. She looked so beautiful in her dress, pretending to like these plates.  
  
Wrap the paper around it, set it into the box. He can pack all his belongs up in under a day now. He doesn't keep much with him, not really needing anything other than his own head to live in. Material possession seem a bit too bulky to him, even know when he has the money to afford them. they just get in the way of his pacing when he's trying to write. Jamie could survive, if he had to, with nothing more than his clothes and a notebook. Elise makes sure to back away a little more than that, but most of the things stay with whatever girl he is leaving now.  
  
Lily, this time. A bright young college student. So smart and witty. Nothing like Sophie, who was spontaneous and passionate, sure, but not that intelligent and after a while the fun faded and Jamie needed something more than just wild parties. He remembers meeting Lily at a book signing, her red hair tied up, her smile young and but far from naive as she handed him his own book. He'd taken her out for coffee and she'd been smart, snappy with her comebacks and everything in her conversation that Sophie so lacked. A journalism major at NYU, young and looking forward to making it in the big city.  
  
Jamie fell in love, and this time... This time it would be forever. This time, she would be everything he needed in this world. His muse, his angel. Lily would be the one.  
  
A year later here he is packing up his bags. She's at a friend’s apartment, no doubt exaggerating their fight out of proportion. She had the annoying habit of doing that. She made every time Jamie even looked at another woman seem like a crime. He wouldn't be surprised if she called Alyssa just to dig up dirt on him. Why did all women turn out like that? Why did they have to take everything so personally? These break ups are never a matter of him not loving the girl. It's all their fault, for pushing away and practicually forcing him into someone's arms.  
  
Has he ever considered that it's his fault?  
  
Elise drops a blanket on top of Jamie's dishes, grabbing the box from him and taping it up. She has no patients with this packing anymore. She just tries to get through it as soon as possible. "Can't you just not move in with them? Just once?" she asks as she heaves the boy up, moving it to the small stack by the door. "I swear, I can already tell you how your next relationship is doomed to go. You're like a Stephen King book. Same story line, different cast."  
  
"Elise," Jamie groans as he walks back to his room, making sure he has everything he needs. Lily's things lay strewn around her bedroom, clothes sloppy torn from drawers as she simply grabbed a handful and marched out, still yelling at him. Calling him immature, a bastard, an idiot. Things he's heard ten times over from every other girl. Except Cathy. Cathy never did call him names. She yelled, of course she yelled just like all the other girls, but after the break up she just walked away. She never tried to call like Alyssa or Sophie. She didn't come crying back to him like Nadine. There wasn't a loud fight like Lily. Cathy just let herself be broken. Just signed the papers and left.  
  
Jamie reaches down, rubbing at his fingers. The ring hadn't been on long enough to leave an impression, but he could still feel it in his mind.  
  
"I'm just saying," Elise continues, ignoring Jamie's warning tone. It means nothing to her. She's done this all before. "Whoever this new girl is, the one you're already sleeping with, does she know?"  
  
"Shauna knows," Jamie says, shutting Lily's door up. Just another one to close. "She's the one, and she knows that." Jamie sounds just as convincing as he ever did when he says these words about every other girl. This time it's different. Shauna isn't Lily or Sophie or Nadine or Alyssa. She isn't Cathy. Shauna gets him. She understands that he needs to be free to write. He can't be suffocated by clinginess and held back by other's fears and uncertainties. Shauna is exciting to be with and so wild. Jamie needs to be in love with someone like her.  
  
Elise walks right by him, rolling his eyes as she grabs the last of his bags. "I'm sure she is," she says as she drags his clothes to the door, her smart heels clicking along the cheap linoleum of the half kitchen. "If you weren't such a good writer, I would hate you."  
  
Jamie sighs, padding over the cheap carpet to the door. Lily's apartment, a cheap place for students, doesn't look any less full without his things. He remembers Cathy's and his place, the walls where there pictures were hanging. He'd taken his clothes, his plates, his computer, and yet the whole apartment seemed to be cut in half with only her things. "You don't understand..." He says, hoping this won't turn into a fight.  
  
"You're right," Elise says, her tone still unbearably harsh. Like his mother. "I'm a lesbian. No way I could possibly understand women." She straightens herself out, blood red lips turned down in a frown of disappointment. Like she could understand what Jamie goes through every time he leaves these girls. It isn't his fault that none of them are what he need. Too air headed, too over analytic, too needy, too insecure. They all seem so perfect at first, so inspiring. But Jamie needs his room. He needs space in his mind and his heart for new ideas to grow, or else how can he write?  
  
"A new girl for a new book," Elise said after Sophie, and Jamie is reluctant to admit how true that might be. Expect with Cathy. He wrote plenty with her, but in the end... In the end she was like every other girl.  
  
Elise is still watching him, waiting for something. Eventually she sighs and shakes her head, giving up on that faint hope that Jamie will start unpacking and stay with Lily. Jamie couldn't do it. He can't be with a girl that keeps trapping him into corners like this. "What was so wrong with Cathy?" she asks, looking out the window and waiting for that trunk she rented to pull up. She joked once that she just needs to buy one, that it would be cheaper with the way Jamie goes through homes. There hadn't been in humor in that. "Or Alyssa, or Nadine, or any of them, really?"  
  
"No," Jamie says, biting over his cheek and shaking his head as he thinks over all those girls. Has he ever considered that it's his fault? Maybe, distantly, yes. What is so wrong with wanting perfection, though, and maybe if Jamie didn't jump into bed with every girl he thought was right for him, maybe he wouldn't go through so many relationships. The fact is, though, that Jamie needs to be in love with someone. "They just weren't right."  
  
Elise throws her hands up in the air, like a character from one of his books so frustrated with the protagonist and unable to see how right they are. "Where do you writers get these ideas?" She asks the ceiling, or God, or the guy above Lily playing rap music unbearably loud. "I love Amy more than anything, and she doesn't inspire me to edit. There have been days where she doesn't even inspire me to come home. Love isn't some mystical force Jamie, it's work and -"  
  
Jamie holds out his hand, cutting his editor off. "Spare me. I've heard this from mom about three thousand times."  
  
Elise, still pouting, crosses her arms over her chest and nods. "Smart woman." She doesn't push it any further. Just stands at the door, tapping her heel against the carpet and waiting for Amy to show up with the truck.  
  
Her words still echo around the small space, into Jamie's head were they stay caught like a good idea he has for a passage. One he can't loosen until he lets it out onto paper. "Have you ever considered that maybe it's... you."  
  
How could it be his fault when all he'd done was love her? He'd treasured Cathy. He's married her, for God's sake! She just didn't want to be happy. She wanted to be miserable and unsavable, and so eventually Jamie had been forced to give up on her and Alyssa had been there, soft and kind and willing. A mistake, yes, but even without her how much longer could he have lasted?  
  
Is it Jamie's fault that he knows what he wants? That these girls, that Cathy, keep forcing him to look elsewhere for what he needs? Is it his fault she was never confident enough in herself? That she needed Jamie to validate her? He has enough trouble just finding his novels without being responsible for Cathy, too.  
  
Elise's heel keeps bouncing against the carpet. Her sharp eyes turn from the window to Jamie, studying him for a moment. It's a far cry from that overly, faked smile she'd given him that first year when she treated him like her own gold mind that might collapse at any moment. Now she knows him, and she isn't afraid of giving him a few bruises. "Whatever keeps you writing," she says when he turns and catches her staring.  
  
Jamie is just trying to write. Is that really his fault?


	2. Cathy, Are You Still There?

**Cathy, Are You Still There?**

  
  
"Mom!"  
  
It's horrifying, really, to hear that word shouted at you. Cathy never knew how scary it would be, until it happened to her. Here she is in her white Keds, make up slapped on in a hurry and pushing a cart down the long isle of the store, staring at the walls of colorful boxes with cartoon figures laughing at her.  
  
"Mom!" Her four-year-old dances at her heels, spinning and tipping this way and that. She grabs one of those colorful boxes, waving it in Cathy's face. "Mom, I want!"  
  
Cathy sighs, looking down at the bright box. It looks like every other kid's cereal in the world, expect this one is being waved in her face and is saying, "I want! I want!"  
  
Cathy wants out.  
  
Of this store where she's been shopping for the last six years. Of this marriage she isn't sure how she got talked into. Of this child she can barely look at without thinking, "When did I get so old?" When did she stop even trying out for the tours. When did she just give up on the dream of being an actress and settle for teaching high school drama. High school drama! She hated those kids, back when she had to be in classes full of them with their pretensions and never ending talk about how wonderful they were. She hates them now, those same kids in her mind that stand around her, thinking she is so unimportant. They’re right, too. Who is she to teach what she could even achieve?  
  
"Mom!" Samantha is yelling as she waves the box around. "Mom! I want."  
  
Where did Cathy's life go wrong? When did it take this turn and crash into high schools, into suburbs with children and SUVs and walking an annoying dog every day because her husband, the one who wanted the dog in the first place, doesn't fill up to it after a hard day at work. Like he has any idea what hard means. He doesn't have to teach class after class of kids who think she knows nothing then pick up Sam and get her feed and clean the house and make the meal.  
  
When did Cathy become her mother?  
  
She snatches the box from Samantha's hands and throws it into the cart without looking down at it or the price. She's using Daniel's card, and he'll complain about how much she spends on groceries but she hardly cares anymore. She just blocks him out. Nods and says, "Yes honey," and "I'm sorry, honey," while her thoughts are flying around. Anywhere but here.  
  
She doesn't want to be this girl. When did she become this girl?  
  
Wasn't there some point... Cathy closes her eyes, hearing Samantha bouncing around after her and the squeak of the cart’s wheels and all the other moms digging through the isles for a sale... Wasn't there a point where she expected more? She doesn’t want to be the girl hauling around groceries and new school clothes, going home to cook dinner for her husband. She wanted to be famous, to be noticed and able to support herself. She wanted to break the mold of her parents and her friends and her entire town.  
  
Now she’s here with Samantha, and there is only a twinge of guilt that she can’t love the girl more. No, that’s not true. She loves Samantha deeply. More than she even thought was possible. She just… She hates her, too. Hates what she represents. The suburbs. The housewife. The nine to five job.  
  
“Mom!”  
  
Cathy has become the mother. Her mother. Everything she wanted to avoid. What happened to the girl waking up at six for auditions? When did she started waking up that early to change Samantha’s sheets?  
  
She wants to blame Jamie. She had been happy with him, hadn’t she? It’s his fault, or it should be in all fairness, that she ended up here. What can a girl do when she’s left alone to hurt? And there was Daniel, so confident that he knew what was right for her. So shy and geeky. He would never really leave her for some college-aged girl. The ones Jamie didn’t think she knew about. What happened to the girl that stood up in front of a table of men, belting her heart out? When did she start standing in front of rows of students, just trying to get them to hear her?  
  
When did she get lost?  
  
“Mom,” Samantha is still saying as she follows at Cathy’s heels. Her lovely little daughter. The thing she loves more than anything. Should Cathy have to chant that every day in her head? Shouldn’t it just be a given. “Mom, I want some of that juice. The ones in the silver bags!”  
  
“Right,” Cathy says, and steers the cart towards the isle she knows by heart. The way she use to know Jamie’s smile. The way she use to know the path to the talent agency. When she was younger and more determined not to become just another statistic of her home town. She wanted to be someone, and this is what she got.  
  
Easy to blame Jamie for all of this. He was supposed to be different. She would have never been the housewife with him. The way Jamie’s world was spun, no one around him could be simple, plain, nobody. She wants that old life back, even the part with Jamie. Even though she hates him, and it still hurts thinking about what they have and what they lost. It’s better than living in this world. She walks through the isles, hardly here at all.  
  
Her mom had been right. Cathy is not made to be an independent young actress. She is made for this, this child and this husband and this horrible house with the garden in back that she lets rot and go to waste. Cathy wants to not need anyone, but she still needs someone like Jamie. Her mom is right, but there is no way she can understand how hard it is for Cathy to admit she needs someone who found it so easy to leave her.  
  
“Mom!” Again and again and again. Cathy sighs, nods, and picks up the juice boxes.  
  
“See?” She says as she places them into the cart. “See, here they are?” Samantha smiles and goes back to her dancing. Every now and then Cathy wonders why she loves it so, when dancing can only lead to dreaming which leads to a husband and a minivan and a life you don’t want. You get lost in dreams, and then when you don’t get them you feel helpless to pull yourself out, unwilling to try. Cathy lost herself, and she couldn’t claw away at the dark and find Jamie again. So here she is instead, pushing a cart down a grocery mark, looking for eggs and cheese and colorful cereals. Watching her daughter dance right by her.


End file.
